For one, let’s not get too excited by the fact that Facebook‘s active users are not increasing. Facebook has been around for many years now, and although it is still growing, it is growing a lot slower. It doesn’t really have the space to grow much anymore, whereas, platforms like Pinterest and Tumblr have a lot of space and are not mature enough yet. Facebook has over 1.2 billion users at the moment, and would need a massive exodus to dent it though.

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It’s not so much their success as platforms, but rather that they are alternatives to Facebook, as many people look for different ways to communicate. Trends shift and so do users’ interests and needs. Maybe Facebook has reached a certain level of “maturity” and users are getting a bit bored. In any case, studies show that there is a trend towards multi-networking, which means that users tend to use more than one social network for different uses, so that’s one way of looking at it.

Either way, Facebook is the only platform to see lower numbers – There were 8% fewer active users compared to last year. Despite Facebook‘s dynamic entry into video territory, YouTube grew 13%, Twitter grew 8%, and Google+ grew 7% in the last year. Pinterest and Tumblr actually both nearly doubled with 97% and 94% respectively!

Have a look at the numbers in GlobalWebIndex‘s Chart of the Day, below.